George W. Bush: Still More Presidential than Barack Obama

On August 11, 2010, troops arriving home at DFW Airport from Iraq and Afghanistan were greeted with a real surprise: former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura were standing inside the terminal to shake hands, give hugs, and take pictures as the soldiers got off the plane. When I saw photographs from that day I immediately wondered why we’d yet to see pictures of Obama shaking hands with troops and at least appearing to be happy while doing so.

I’d had similar feelings on November 7, 2009, after news broke that Bush and his wife had spent a few hours meeting with victims (and the families of victims) of the Ft. Hood shooter. Obama, for his part, delivered a speech the day after the shootings in which giving “a shout out” to supporters of health care reform took precedence over addressing the massacre. As usual, it was all Obama all the time.

And this brings me to the central point of this piece — namely, the assertion that Bush is still more presidential than Obama. Even recent polls conducted by Democrats have confirmed this by showing that “Bush [is] more popular than Obama in vulnerable congressional districts.” Candidates for Congress in these areas run for the hills to avoid Obama if he happens to roll into their district. (It should be noted that this isn’t a sudden or recent development. As early as December 2009, Politico reported that while 50% of voters approved of Obama, 44% were already longing to have Bush back in office.)

Although all the reasons for Bush’s resurgence in popularity may be impossible to pin down with precision, we cannot overlook the contrast between the way he and Obama feel about this country. Throughout his presidency, and even now, Bush held this country in high esteem while Obama literally “doesn’t like America the way it has been since its founding,” according to Tony Blankley. And people sense this about Obama: he has “a chip on his shoulder,” a grudge he holds against this country which Bush would never have allowed to maturate during his administration.

Moreover, Bush just seems genuinely human. We realized this shortly after the attacks on 9/11, when we watched news clips of Bush sobbing as he prepared the nation for the pending War on Terror by saying: “I’m a loving man, but I have a job to do.” We cheered for him when he stood with his arm around a fireman’s neck at Ground Zero and shouted into a bullhorn: “I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” On the other hand, Obama is a stiff. And because he can’t speak from the heart about anything except liberalism, he has to travel with a teleprompter in case he needs to read an even somewhat patriotic speech to the people.

I believe people also respect the fact that Bush did what needed to be done to protect the U.S. from another terrorist attack, even when doing so had waned in popularity. Voters still remember that it was Bush who supported the surge that turned the tables on our enemies in Iraq and put victory back in our grasp, while it was Illinois Senator Barack Obama who opposed the surge by saying: “We can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, [or] 30,000 more troops, [but] I don’t know any expert … who believes that is going to make a substantial difference on the ground.”

Obama was wrong on the surge (it did work), and Americans are now waking up to the fact that he’s wrong on a lot of other things as well. He’s wrong on the economy, he’s wrong on financial reform, he’s wrong on health care reform, he’s wrong on his refusal to treat terrorists like terrorists, and he’s wrong for painting a picture of America as a country that isn’t exceptional. And while this isn’t to say that Bush got things right every time, honest readers will have to admit that at least Bush was motivated by a love for country instead of an ideologically driven agenda that only Fidel Castro could appreciate.

Thank you, George W. Bush, for your service to this country. Thank you for your decency. And thank you for your enduring support for the troops.

AWR Hawkins is a conservative writer who holds a Ph.D. in military history from Texas Tech University.

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100 Comments, 48 Threads

1.
aztikal

Barack Obama is officially now the worst president we’ve ever had. Worse even than Hoover. Perhaps even worse than Buchanan who lit the fuse on the Civil War.

It’s fun to watch conservatives try so desperately to offload that title onto anybody but Bush, who worked hard over 8 years to earn it, and still holds it, and will until the day Sarah Sweetcheeks gets elected.

Bush is a natural-born Citizen of this country… born and raised here. Our Founders knew what they were doing.

Yeah, yeah, I know… the whole Birther thing. Still, we see the contrast starkly. Bush, for all his faults, is clearly one of us. Obama clearly is not. We are now subject to the Other. It is an ugly feeling.

First, I am not Irish (well, a little). I took my wife’s name when we married, because folks could never say or spell mine correctly… and I like the letter M. I am legally Native American, mixed with various Caucasian, and can trace both sides of my family here for centuries.

Hiccough is the proper spelling of what you know as “hiccup”.

I speak 5 languages. My command of the English language is extensive, and I won many spelling bees in school. My IQ is around 200.

So, Unhinged Teabot, how’s that mocking working out for you? About as well as the huge jump to conclusions?

You shouldn’t classify people into “us” vs “them” simply based on their place of birth or ethnic ancestry. That was my point. I don’t agree with Mr.Obama’s policies but he’s not “other”. AND… Obama’s mother’s English ancestors have been here for centuries.

America’s beauty , uniqueness… is the fact that, here it DOESNT MATTER WHERE YOU CAME FROM! This is the reason why America towers over the rest of the world.

As you say, you’re a native American which means you’re the biggest “other” from the founders’ perspective, for example. Read the declaration and see Jefferson’s complaint about the indians. You’re mentioning this in public in circa 2010, because its fashionable in the age of Oprah, but people have been hiding their native ancestry or black ancestry for 250+ years.

MY IQ is around 220 (10 points more than yours) and I’m also a male supermodel.

“I speak 5 languages. My command of the English language is extensive, and I won many spelling bees in school. My IQ is around 200.” . . . and I can make pancakes from scratch and I can fly a helicopter and grow tomatoes in water and I can multiply numbers in my head without a pencil and I can cash checks from the government because of bad things that happened a long time ago that I never had to experience. How’s that bravado working out for you?

But still, we are left with the truth that none of our Presidents are perfect, not even close. The Scarborough piece was fairly objective, just showing clips which spoke for themselves, but the liberals who took all this stuff to the end of the earth and the people here, who do the same to Obama, in this and EVERY thread don’t care about objectivity, they just care about inflicting damage on “the enemy.” GWB was the enemy to many. Obama is the enemy to many others now. The things we humans will do to entertain ourselves, all the time sounding as if we are sure of the truth and virtue we are protecting; ain’t it grand?

With what ever faults come to mind..at least with Bush we felt that he “liked” us..our nation etc.
With Obama it’s like he’s a snotty high school senior spittin on the freshmen.. I resent his smirky ass attitude. The wiener/whiner would have been crushed in a normal high school.

The corresponding Obama video will begin with “all 57 states” then cover his bowing to foreign leaders, and maybe finish up with his statement “And so part of my job, I think, as president, is to make government cool again.” Bush made me laugh. Obama makes me cringe.

That chip is most visible in Obama’s backhanding of the very base that supported him most ardently. He and Vice-ClownPresident Biden have been roaming the country telling his 2008 supporters that for them to cease their support of him and his agenda is “inexcusable.”

Of course, this isn’t the first evidence. Obama has also opined, in full view of the cameras and hearing of the microphones, that the majority of the nation is opposed to his health-care measure because “we didn’t explain it clearly enough.” His Administration has been at war with FOX News because it refrains from canonizing him, as the on-air networks and other cable-only channels have so enthusiastically done. His assault on Rush Limbaugh — that makes him the first officeholder to go after a commentator personally, in public, and by name — are worthy of a spoiled toddler angry that his entry in the art contest didn’t take first prize.

Oh, mustn’t forget his tendency to blame all his troubles on George W. Bush. Indeed, I rather suspect that the following:

Michelle: Honey, I’m pregnant!
Barack: Bush did it!

…might actually occur, if BHO were confronted with such news when his thoughts are elsewhere.

Thin-skinned and narcissistic, impatient of restraint, ungracious and wooden, contemptuous of American values and traditions, a counterfeit Christian who has to leave “endowed by their Creator” out of his citations of the Declaration of Independence…oh, yeah, that’s what we all call presidential timber!

“And while this isn’t to say that Bush got things right every time, honest readers will have to admit that at least Bush was motivated by a love for country instead of an ideologically driven agenda that only Fidel Castro could appreciate.”

Truer words have never been written. The reason I supported Bush was because I always believed he cared about the nation. I also really felt safe with him as president. I always believed that Bush and Cheney were much more aggressive at bringing the war to the terrorists and doing whatever it took to keep Americans safe. Obama seems to just react to a threat, rather than trying to prevent something from happening. And Bush also talked about “corny” things like “freedom” and “liberty,” especially in the Muslim world. When was the last time you heard Obama praise freedom or individual liberty?

Did Bush get everything right? Of course he did not. But at least he tried and you knew that he was motivated by love of country and our people, and not by personal gain or naked ambition, like Obama is.

I am a reader of PajamasMedia in Norway who wants to thank you for your words of sympathy for GWB! Bush 43 had a terrible time after 9/11/01 and what most amazed and puzzled me as a European was all the rancor and bad-mouthing I heard from your ‘talking heads’.
Thankfully, after nineteen months of Obamaism they no longer seem so assured!
Certainly it is now a lot more interesting what the news media do NOT say but should. After the fall of CBS, ABC and, partly,NBC, America now has only one outlet to rely on, Fox News!
Your various internet pages do a good job as far as it goes(TownHall, FrontPageMag et al), but it is quite frightening that your traditional values are no longer upheld by major media stations!!! Leaders in Singapore, South Korea and elsewhere in Asia e.g. no longer bother to do their bit for America and peace regarding China vs. Japan and such because your vice-President is a buffoon and his boss is a repetitious incompetent!!!

Amen! It was obvious that President Bush loved and revered this country. He took unpopular stands and stuck with them for our safety. I often wondered why he didn’t come out swinging at his hateful critics. He had more “Presidential” in his little finger than the current admin has anywhere. Obama is an embarrassment to this land, completely disconnected in every way. It’s sickening to watch our name be drug through the mud by a President who hates everything about this country-including his own constituents…

Lets see Bush introduced a 30% import tax on steel, increased farmer subsides that only the Europeans can match, spent trillions on two illegal wars, sat back and did nothing about the financial sector fraud machine while it racked up unsustainable debt then before Obama was elected started the Bail out using tax payer dollars.Started the torture and illegal detention of prisoners with many of the Gauntanomo bay detainees sent home with no charge. The Media loved Bush and they fully supported the avalanche of lies that got the US into Iraq. But so what if hundreds of thousands die,so what if the Geneva convention is ripped up and that from now on every Western soldier captured could be tortured because Faux News and Bush think its OK.What if he OK’d spying on US citizens,what if your rights were taken away under the Patriot Act, Bush and Cheney should be impeached and most of the people on this page need to get their memory back.

Pres. Bush for all his warts and foilables, that the MSM were all too eager to point out to us, has something that elevates him to a point where he towers over Odummy and that is: he loves America.

And when you think about it that is THE foundational difference between progressives and conservatives: We love America while they hate America. Was Pres. Bush a screw-up on domestic policy, yep. Prescription drugs, open borders, appeasing the left and more. Did he make mistakes in his war policy, yep.

But his mistakes were just that mistakes. He did what he did for America the best way he could. I’ll take him and his love of America over the current idiot in the WH anyday.

There is no question that GWB is not as unpopular as he once was, and Clinton is even less unpopular. The new guy has taken on the mantle. The stuff supporting GWB here is reasonable; the stuff bashing Obama is the usual boilerplate.

GWB DID have his shining moments and he deserves to be remembered for them; he also grew in the job. His book will be the first written by an ex-President that I will actually buy and read. There is a lot to be accounted for…both the good and the bad.

Mr.Bush spent a somewhat reckless youth, but the presidency has allowed(!) him to evolve into a “great” man.

He hasn’t made a single sniping remark since he left office. Not ONE. Absolute Class. Goes to show you breeding does count; not mere merit and I.Q.

I don’t remember him making sarcastic, divisive statements while in office either. (I mean..EXPLICITLY divisive, of course. Setting-man-against-man kind of divisiveness and vitriol that pervades the B.O, Sarah Palin crowds)

Not serving in the army, and refusing to stop the Rovian besmirching of McCain in SC are the two big blackmarks. Otherwise there are no traces of “smallness” about the man.

You’re wrong about one point at the end– George Bush did serve in the military. It may have been a champagne unit for sons of privilege, but it was still service in uniform, especially at a time when “mandatory” service could be avoided quite easily.

And, champagne unit or not, even one day of service in uniform is more than most of us, myself included, have ever given our country.

I’d take genuine over “facsimile” any day. Good article.
Whether you agreed with George’s policies or not, it is absolutely unmistakable that he loves America and Americans. He led our country with strength and honor and to this day still serves America with dignity. Integrity and trust in a president matters a lot, you either have it or you don’t. The current one, doesn’t.

With George at the helm, it was a good thing “to be proud to be an American”,
unlike the self-absorbed,self-indulgent,”mad hatter” divisive hustler we have now.
Our culture has become coarse, vulgar and simply lazy, so unfortunately maybe we got the kind of president we deserved at this time in history. He definitely is the poster child for substandard and undeserved leadership.

America is in dire need of real strength and certainty right now, not a perpetual “american idol” type political candidate with anti-american views.

Why wait till 2012? America is a free nation and it has great institutions. Since Chairman Obama is doing such a lousy job, why not have him impeached and finish the story? Can it be any simpler? Lucky First Lady Michelle who gets to go on a luxury vacation to Espana on the American people’s money! Why not vacation in the U.S. and spend our money in America then in Espana? Allot of Americans had to skip vacations because of financial propblems. They are OUT OF TOUCH ELITISTS.

Because under the Constitution only the Congress can impeach him. BTW elections are in a month.

But impeaching Obama will do no good if the power base who propelled him to presidency isn’t destroyed. That means the Acorn and Black Panther organizations who allowed him to prevail over Hillary Clinton (it is my firm belief he would have never won the Democratic nomination without these, don’t forget he lost the popular vote and prevailed in the caucuses ie the primary form who is easiest to fix by concerted activists) but also the MSM who did their utmost to hide both Acorn’s activity and any shade in Obama’s past. It is essential that militant “journalism” becomes a thing of the past. Otherwise impeaching Obama will be like cutting one of hydra’s heads.

I agree 100% — George W. Bush is to be thanked for loving this country and supporting our troops. He has modeled patriotism for us all, and the pot-shots being taken at him over gaffes and such are just attempts at smearing him made by people who supported Obama and are now sorry for it.

Tragically Barack Obama is more representative of the US than GW. Spoiled, sheltered, immature, superficial, petty, silly, selected purely on the basis of his appearance rather than experience and depth, a product of a generation that never had to worry about their prosperity, freedom or security. I hope the Obama presidency turns into a learning experience. If it does then he would have an invaluable service to a country he clearly hates.

BTW Dave M you are absolutely right. Obama is not a liberal, he is a left wing fascist (a really underused term, especially when describing Obama). He clearly slowed this when he tried to substitute a left wing fascist government for a democratic one in Honduras. Just why and how this little unimportant tidbit of information continues to be overlooked remains a mystery to me.

“Just why and how this little unimportant tidbit of information continues to be overlooked remains a mystery to me.”

Its no mystery…. any more than the virtual news blackout on his checkered past, admitted drug use, radical associations etc etc…and the complete disregard of the “tidbit” that the racist murder avocating, deadly weapon carrying, vote-intimidating NBP member is on the White House visitors log.

Imagine if GWB associated with an abortion clinic bomber, and had a (video taped!) confrontational KKK member as a WH visitor, and NO ONE in the media was interested.

They are left wing Facists, just like him, and will carry water for the cause till the “chickens come home to roost”

Adjectives like classy, dignified, humble, loving, emotional, gracious, caring and patriotic apply to former President and Mrs. Bush. Their legacy should remind us what great presidents do in times of danger. We know how difficult Iraq became and why: Iran. It’s time to remove the gloves and take it to the limit (source) again. This will help NATO reach an Afghanistan resolution as well.

and all of the power and money in the world can’t change that…you either have it or you don’t. Obama’s his own worst enemy… with all of his advisors, he has still managed to alienate most of America and much of the non-Muslim world. Need I say more, except…glad to see that so many are finally waking up.

G. Bush sincerely tried to be a uniter and president of the whole country. Obama seems radically content to play to his 30% leftist supporters, and to talk to the other 70% like they were enemies of the state. An interview in Rolling Stone Magazine and a screaming pandering rally in Madison, Wisconsin is not presidential. Bush wanted to be perceived as a centralist, Obama portrays himself as president of progressive America.

I have never understood why President Bush has been so vilified. He was a decent president, even though I disagreed with some of his policies, like “compassionate conservatism.” Is the vilification the consequence of George Soros propaganda?

Because the leftoid press hated his guts, as did the leftoid schools, and between them, they have a near monopoly on the flow of information.

There wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Roosevelt and Truman, except that the press loathed Truman (and Truman loathed them right back) and loved that worthless POS Roosevelt. Roosevelt was turned into some kind of God by the press and schools (and, that’s still going on), while Truman left office one of the most unpopular presidents of all time.

Most people in this country are stupid enough to believe what they’re told in school, what they read in the scandal sheets, and what they hear on the idiot box.

That’s why Roosevelt, the worst POTUS in our history, is worshipped, while Warren Harding, the best POTUS of the 20th century, is despised (and vilified when people bother to remember him).

See today’s article in the WSJ about the second Great Depression. It compares 0′s feckless economic policies to FDR’s… and not in a flattering way. As I read the article, I began to think that although conventional wisdom missed the “FDR’s Policies Worsened and Prolonged the Depression” story, historians and the media have a second chance now to see what throwing money at a crisis does….. It occurred to me as I read the story that Obama may be the worst thing that ever happened to FDR’s legacy (after Amity Shlaes, perhaps.)

I’ve proudly commented from the beginning, no matter what President Bush cared about people. It is his greatest attribute. There is something deeply simple and heart warming about that. Amongst all the responsibilities and burdens one takes on as President of the United States, if one has this quality, one is a rich man who has everything.

Thank you Mr. George Bush, my President and fellow American, Thank you for your service and care for your fellow Americans. You are admired for the decent man you are more than you may know.

1) Bush was not and has never been a decent President. To honestly believe otherwise would mean being in a coma since the year 2000, waking up, and then immediately turning on Fox News and never turning the channel.

2) There was another PJM article comparing Obama to the Stuxnet computer bug that seriously messed up Iran’s nuclear development. The analogy in that case was just the usual right wing nonsense, but it actually works if Stuxnet is compared to Bush — he caused so much death and destruction that it will take years to recover from.

3) The only bits of his “legacy” that future historians will likely see as being significant in terms of what his entire presidency was about are this and this.

Well, shoot, I’m sure glad you provided these precious insights since we’ve never heard any negatives against President George W. Bush…..fresh information you got there. I’m all shocked and stuff to learn how awful he is/was, and will not have to devote a millisecond to absorb it all.

Ok. Done.

Turns out what you said is irrelevant and untrue. Going on with my life now….Republican campaign signs in our 12,000+ regional shopping-center town are running about 12 to 1 in frequency over democrat signs. Looking forward to change.

‘I dare you to find one issue with any of those links or the claims I used them for.’

Oh, just stop the nonsense for God’s sake. Challenging people to go read your cited links? You waste your time and ours including links with your muttering. I doubt any of the frequent readers here bother with following any link you put up. The links are invariably to progressive pablum. More often than not they either undermine the claim you’re trying to make when one does take the time to read and consider them (which you don’t seem to), or outright contradict your claim.

You’re posterboy for how BDS has taken the progressive sheep out of the political conversation for another 40 years, BC, and you serve up comic relief here. Nothing more.

Just Passing Through babbled: Oh, just stop the nonsense for God’s sake. Challenging people to go read your cited links?

So in other words, you’re basically saying that right winger don’t read anything that might challenge or upset their somewhat skewed view of reality?

Hmmm….you might actually have a point there…. but if I can at least stir the unused brain cells in just one seemingly hopelessly confused person, well, that’s not the worst accomplishment. And hunting down authoritative, no-BS links has turned up some pretty cool/disturbing things that I didn’t even know about or were in the public domain, like this giant shoe sculpture at an Iraqi orphanage in honor of the guy who threw his shoe at Bush, and this little badly copied but still readable tale of the extent to which the US covertly helped Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.

You get mocked continually on PJM for citing the links you do because you’re a clown who tries to waste our time linking BDS drivel. Have someone who can read explain that to you, because you just don’t seem capable of grasping that on your own.

What is amusing about Bush haters like BC is that they are so shallow, so ignorant, so uneducated and so uninformed on the issues that they criticize George Bush for all of the wrong reasons, criticizing him on contrived, bogus and irrational pretexts, instead for the actual mistakes which he made, mistakes with which clueless Bush haters like BC are unfamiliar, because the sum total of their knowledge about the events which occurred during the Bush presidency is based on hearsay from people who are as biased, ignorant and as
uninformed on the issues as they are.

I just broke my own rule here. Usually, I ignore the silly comments of people like BC. They’re too ignorant to discuss issues intelligently. So they just hit and run. In BC’s case, he wasn’t even argumentative, certainly not rationally. He just added more empty rhetoric to the empty rhetoric that he had posted previously. BC is vacuous. My three-year-old is more mature and smarter than BC is …., and probably better educated, too.

…, instead of for the actual mistakes which he made, mistakes with which clueless Bush haters like BC are unfamiliar, because the sum total of their knowledge about the events which occurred during the Bush presidency is based on hearsay from people who are as biased, ignorant and as uninformed on the issues as they are …, and on bizarre, invalid theories which they have whimsically contrived themselves. (In other words, what would BC have if he didn’t have his delusions?)

Yeah, yeah, yeah — defensively name call all you want, but the bottom line is that when I make my points, I back them up with evidence you can’t squirm around, like declassified memos, whereas you guys simply get all cognitive dissonant and rant on like a spoiled 3 yr old demanding a candy bar at a supermarket checkout counter. Bush was an awful, awful President and the people who voted for him either were hopelessly dumb or couldn’t be bothered to learn a damn thing at all about what was going in the world beyond where they park their cars. And those people are very much the same clueless, make-the-world-worse types now bashing Obama and planning to vote Republican this November.

All members of the Bush family are gracious and well-mannered. Over the years they have shown how much they care about others, including their pets. Laura Bush appeared at the National Book show on the Washington Mall and exhibited the same calm and grace as she did following 9/11

To all of you Bush Fans —the fact remains that the consensus of opinion of the majority of historians in this country is that George W. Bush was the absolutely worse president that the United States has ever had.

Historians? Really? Has enough time passed for Bush’s Presidency to actually be judged historically? Let’s see how the War on terror fully plays out. Let’s see how Iraq turns out. Let’s see a full comparison of Obama’s anti-terror success record after 4 years as compared to Bush. Let’s wait and see how history judges Gtmo.

No historian worth his salt could seriously claim to be able to make a determination yet.

Fact is, Bush’s popularity is on the way up. His record is looking better every day, unlike Carter. I’m a Conservative. I did not like Bush as President either, but I do not consider him evil or incompetent. I merely disagreed with his RINO approach. The same cannot be said for Obama.

Really??? Then why is it that whenever President Obama asks us if we would like to go back to the Bush years, people [informed] on the the issues think, Hell yeah, we would LOVE to go back to 5% unemployment, instead of the 10% unemployment that commenced to get up there the day after YOUR bumbling, incompetent candidate was inaugurated. Never mind that the economy didn’t tank until 2008, a year after the Democrats took control of Congress, who are the people who collect and spend our money. Never mind that our debt is now 20 tiumes what it was when Bush left office, thanks to YOUR party’s control of Congress, and oh yeah, never mind that you are so uninformed on the issues that you made extremely irresponsible comments which make you look very foolish to anyone who is properly informed on the issues.

“Consensus of opinion”, huh? And of who would that be? Clueless people like you who don’t know squat about what is going on out here in the real world?

“the fact remains that the consensus of opinion of the majority of historians in this country is that George W. Bush was the absolutely worse president that the United States has ever had.”

Yeah, and all that tells you is that most historians are left wing nitwits.

If you look at historians rating presidents, leftoid disasters like Woody Wilson, FDR, Andrew Jackson, and even LBJ almost always do well, while good or great presidents like Grant, Harding, Coolidge, Nixon or Bush II do badly.

If you can read these ratings and not fall on the floor laughing, you have no sense of humor.

Yea… I’ve seen some of those “surveys of historians” ordering presidents by greatness – the ones that have Bush near the bottom. They also had Obama in the top 10 (when he had AT BEST done absolutely nothing at all). They have Clinton in the top 5 and Regan in the bottom 1/3. They are absolutely nothing but left wing popularity contests.

AWR Hawkins is right in the fourth paragraph where he says that Bush is more American than Obama. The references to Islamic terrorism are also very pertinant. The truth is that Obama was raised overseas as a Muslim until he was 10, then his grandparents raised him in Hawai as a Christian. Technically, under Sharia, he should be a Muslim because his natural father was a Muslim. His Harvard education was financed by a Saudi prince. No wonder Obama looks as if he has divided loyalties. No wonder he (incorrectly)ascribes to Islam some of the more attractive doctrines of Christianity, and it is not a great surprise that Egypt’s Foreign Minister is convinced that in a private meeting Obama confessed to him that he is a Muslim. If Obama is an apostate of Islam then the death penalty hangs over him. Is he an apostate? Yes, if he became a Christian by his own choice, as he says. So why is there no fatwa declaring him an apostate? Do the Muslims think that discretion on this point is better than the letter of the law, especially since in his heart he is on their side? It certainly looks difficult for a politician to be on both sides of this divide. America or the Umma? Obama wants both as equals and friends. The Umma only wants America under submission. How long can Obama ignore the tension and keep looking as if everything is going to work out fine?

“With Obama it’s like he’s a snotty high school senior spittin on the freshmen.. I resent his smirky ass attitude. The wiener/whiner would have been crushed in a normal high school.”

I must be all in who is smirking at whom, since one of the things many libs including my wife resented about GWB was his smirk. I think that once he had “suffered” enough in the last two years of his Presidency the smirk issue went to the back burner and he probably did not smirk as much any more.

Personally, I did not feel any more love toward me from GWB than I do from Obama. I can live with frat boys, having been one and I can live with an organizer, too. These two in question were guaranteed to offend about half the population with their styles, but I think we have to go back to war hero Eisenhauer to find a President, who did not rub half the country the wrong way. I can’t personally vouch for that, having been too young to really understand what was happening in the Eisenhauer years, but we did like Ike. Who didn’t?

“….it was Illinois Senator Barack Obama who opposed the surge by saying: ‘We can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, [or] 30,000 more troops, [but] I don’t know any expert … who believes that is going to make a substantial difference on the ground.’”

Which begs the question: How come President Obama sent 30-40,000 more troops to Afghanistan? How come he sent the troops from Iraq to Afghanistan instead of sending them home as he promised all three years he campaigned? It all looks different from the other side of the desk, doesn’t it, Obama?

I would hope that no President would send our youngest and best to a foreign war unless he felt it entirely necessary. I know only that I felt safe and a part of something bigger than myself when George Bush was in office. And I for one miss him terribly.

No. 38, it’s “Eisenhower,” not “Eisenhauer.” You should at least try to get the name of your idol right.
Obama doesn’t just rub us the wrong way. He is destroying the nation that our forefathers and Eisenhower and Reagan and George W. dearly loved and believed in. His arrogance is unbelievable, holding himself above Christianity’s God and siding with his “Muslim brothers;” his putting us down in foreign countries and bowing to the emperor of a nation we whipped in WWII and bowing to the Queen of a nation we defeated in the Revolutionary War. He makes me cringe every time he opens his mouth. He puts down those who “cling to their Bibles and guns.” Well, a majority of this country still does exactly that, as he will learn this November.

That Mr. Bush is more American than Obama has little or nothing to do with an honest evaluation of Bush’s Presidency. While George Bush appears to be a nice man, that also does not equate to ‘good job as Pres.’

My opinion is that Bush was a mediocre President who specialized almost solely in the al Qaeda and Iraq wars, who was oblivious to developing economic problems in the US, and in fact contributed to them by the way in which the Iraq war was conducted. That is, he and his advisers thoroughly miscalculated the outcome and costs of this war, and in such a way that it directly played in to these enormous financial/economic difficulties. Thus, he weakened his country as much as he strengthened or protected it.

The personality/niceness question will always be subjective. The fact remains that Bush appeared unstable at different points during his Presidency, and claimed publicly that G-d (‘Jesus’ for Christians) spoke to him directly. Religiosity is fine; believing that he was G-d’s messenger and that the Almighty personally instructed him as to policy is not something that any leader should internalize to such a degree. If he does, the people need to talk to him about that.

I’m not sure if GWB was even as good as a mediocre president. Too many entitlements and spent too much during his administration, although I supported his war effort in Iraq. The point is that he acted more “presidential” and had more “class” than Obama. No complaints about how the media treated him; or how he was treated “like a dog”; or the voters didn’t support him anymore; or radio talk show hosts did not respect him. He didn’t complain about people sitting on his front lawn protesting the war (not like Obama vs. the Tea Party). He never went after the MSM or the Democrats for demonizing him. And we know that they hated him enough to fabricate falsehoods about him. He accepted it all as part of the job.
As far as the deficits created during the Iraq War, they did not contribute at all to the financial crises. They weren’t large enough, i.e. not like Greece. Under Obama in 2 years we added about $2.5 trillion in additional deficits. The crises was caused by the toxic mortgages created during the housing bubble, caused by deregulation of lending standards started during the 70′s and ending in the 2000′s. Bush had $700B added to his $1.4 trillion deficit in 2008 due to TARP. Most of that has since been payed back by the banks, but never used to pay down Bush’s 2008 deficit, thanks to the current administration.

Bush is Obama lite. Do we want global Govt.? Bush was for that so was Clinton
so was Bush 1. We have not had a president since Reagan. 22 years of marching this nation toward ONE WORLD ORDER and GLOBAL GOVT. why? because big business
wants to do business big time, globally, without restraint and by the way if we let them they will literally rule the world. Hey bush how bout that border.

George Bush was so maligned and excoriated by the press and the left and never bit back. Turning the other cheek he practiced his beliefs. You will know them by their fruit.

President Bush obviously loves this country and those who serve it and in the absence of cameras and political brownie points continues to show his respect for his fellow citizens and it’s soldiers. Bush is a real man who truly knows how to “buck up” and his deeds are a testament to his heart and his courage.

Obama could learn a great deal from a great man, but is not teachable.

The entire Bush family is NEW WORLD ORDER. Do you want that? one world Govt.?
Hell senior bush yelled it at us from the white house.
I don’t care how polite any president is if his aim is send us down the road to
one world govt. then he’s an enemy of the constitution and the people of the USA. By the way I voted for both of them but hind sight is 20/20 vision.

i wonder we have yet not prosecuted the gangster bush and company who are responsible for killing of innocent people in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Obama whereas trying to straighten the things in order…I have doubt the weapon industry complex of USA will allow to grow any one taller than it.